A senior politician and former Minister of Information in the Ernest Bai Koroma government, Hon Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, has said the activities of the much trumpeted Tripartite Committee are coming to an end in the midst of misinformation and confusion.
He said the deliberate efforts by the committee to exclude the media from the hearings gives the ugly impression that the tripartite is a secret ‘bondo bush’ affair as members of the public remain in the dark on what was happening in the commission’s findings.
The politician said that has happened because the Tripartite Committee itself does not talk to the people, leading to the dangerous notion whereby the two political parties, the APC and the SLPP, have decided that each party is at liberty to draw its own conclusion as to what the tripartite is all about.
He said the majority of the APC followership, which continues to hold the belief that the June 24 elections were rigged, insists that the tripartite committee should recommend a re-run of the June elections conducted last year. The implications of such an assertion have not yet been fully explained to the public, he added.
The SLPP, which is in power and which happens to be the main beneficiary of the June 24 elections, has also insisted that the elections are over and they have done with that, an affirmation that Hon Korgbo believes, has angered the youths of the APC.
“If, on the other hand, the SLPP holds on its belief suggesting that Maada Bio won the June 2023 elections, then there is no need for a mediation,” he said.
The use of the word mediation is deliberate because in such a standoff which has witnessed the two main political parties but are not seeing eye-to-eye, this means, he added, the future of Sierra can only be described as bleak.
He believes that reconciling the APC and SLPP does not merely suggest an effort to make the parties exhibit a better sense of patriotism.
But it means also, in a country where the two political parties have grown over the years based on tribal and regional lines, the Tripartite Committee should also not ignore this fact- on ironing out the ethnic differences.
“The most impatient people on this whole tripartite discussions are the youths, and are mostly APC and SLPP supporters who have used social media by hijacking the leadership roles of their two parties.”
The APC leadership, for example, is at the mercy of their social media bloggers, he said.
The APC and SLPP information secretariats exist only by name as the SLPP and APC bloggers have taken over the business of informing the public about sometimes very delicate political matters “and this is not good for our democracy,” he noted angrily.
Hon Kargbo said the situation has not been helped by the activities of the extremely talkative American Ambassador to Sierra Leone who has found fun in pre-empting the outcome of the tripartite findings as his utterances continue to create tension within the political houses.
The brewing political tension in the country is as a result of the fact that the expectations of the APC party supporters have not been managed by the APC leadership just as the Tripartite Committee has not been able to talk to the people to explain to the populace about the deliberation of the committee which would have been a beginning point of managing the expectations of the public, he said.
The APC politician said the disastrous possibility is that the Tripartite Committee will end its sittings on the sad note that the APC and the SLPP would continue to hold the same original position as they had held before the committee was set up, which is also not good for national peace and security.
“If the APC returns to square one, it would easily mean that the APC would continue to hold the view that Dr. Samura Kamara did not lose the elections.”
“The absence of any knowledge as to how the Tripartite is going about its business, and the whole business of its operations has been reduced to a ‘monologue’ as the Tripartite Committee talks only to itself, leaving out the populace in such a very critical matter affecting the general populace and the future of Sierra Leone.”